“Some men are true,” Trey told Jael that very night after tracking her down to the Temple Rock cloister, “and others are florns in the Devil’s purse. The clergy owns half the Cross, the other half serves God, blood, and soil. You’ve seen what the church has to offer here in Pareo, bishops like Whitehand, and worse. Endure, Leonhardt, at least until it comes time for your Confirmation. Till I know what you’re made of.”
Four weeks passed after the captain said that to her, a month of constant training, jeering, evading Sylvertre’s attention, and savoring the cheers of paladins Troy Schirmer, Mathew Gardner, and brothers Sir Buckley and Squire Royce Armstrong. Their praise kept Jael’s spirit strong, and by the end, even the cool glare of silent Paladin Corvin was welcome compared to the hateful tongue of the Black Brothers.
Then the day of Confirmation arrived. It was time for the new squires to swear their final oaths, to decide if they truly wanted a life in the Cross, a life of endless duty and celibacy, forfeit of legacy, lineage, and promises. Leonhardt could think of nothing else but Zach as she, Sylvertre, and Blackheart knelt together in the great sanctuary of the Temple Rock. She saw him in every face on the fresco of the Messaii patriarchs and the red robed saint drawing Æturnum from the Holy Rock. She saw Zach in the mosaic of Saint Constance inlaid on the open floor; and in the tapestries, the high windows beaming, the seven travertine steps of the grand transept, and in the marbled stone of the high holy altar. His image haunted her—robbed the sanctuary of its beauty, the sacrament of its sanctity. The moment passed as if an unpleasant dream: Gildmane spoke. A vicar showered them with blessed water. She prayed and swore and confirmed her commitment, and through it all, she felt herself a liar.
Next morning came early. Dawn had yet to climb the far walls of Ward Aureus, and in the lodge of the Saint’s Cross, all was in darkness. Jael lurched upright in her cot, frigid with sweat. The hair on her arms stood on end as she listened and heard nothing but the soft snores of her companions. It was just a nightmare, she told herself, though the details of her torment she couldn’t recall. Even if she could, it mattered little. There was no returning to sleep in sweat-dampened sheets, so she reached with her legs till her feet found the floor. Standing on the cold wood, she peeled the wet shift from her chest. At once, it sucked back onto her skin. She needed fresh clothes. She needed a bath.
Leonhardt gathered a shift and shirt, stockings and linens, and her old leather boots. Under cover of darkness, she padded down the stairs to prepare the bath cauldron. Then a miracle occurred. As she carried water from the duct to the kitchen, it seemed to her that the buckets had become lighter, that the pots boiled faster, that she was eager to climb into the clean, steaming water and feel the knots in her back and neck melt away. They did, as did her worries and vague notions of bad-dreams in a cloud of steam until she fell asleep.
It was as if she’d blinked and an hour had died. The water was hardly warm, and Jael could hear the servants’ footsteps rushing about between the kitchen and the common room. Then another set of footsteps entered the basement. She turned, her eyes squinted, unadjusted to the dim, oil lanterns.
“I’m impressed, Leonhardt. I didn’t think you’d learn your first lesson so quickly.” At the sound of Trey’s voice, Jael sunk in the tub so that only above her nose showed. That made the captain chuckle, and he kept his grin as he walked passed the cauldron to face away from her as he removed his garments. “Just try not to fall asleep next time,” he said. “Captain Acker had me scrubbing pots and pans with the servants every time I drifted off. Speaking of servants…” He paused, dropping an article to the floor.
Jael turned at the sound—flushed pink—then turned again to face away from him. Another evening in the cloister.
“…I put in an order for you. It just arrived yesterday. You’ll find it wrapped at the bottom of my wardrobe. I hope it all fits. It’s a special day for you squires. You’ll be representing the Cross at the Hibernis Fair.” Another article fell. “Are you still in there?”
†††
Trey lamented not looking when he had the chance. He was happy to see the boots and hose and breeches fit snugly, the gambeson tightly under a maille shirt, a tailored surcoat, and a taut sword belt, yet striking as Jael was in her new attire, it was no substitute for the muscled flesh that must hide beneath. The image transfixed him. Gildmane had long since lost interest in the noble daughters of Pareo’s skylords, as he had in the common women and the painted whores. But this one was different. He couldn’t accept it at first, that after years I would be roused by a woman so—focus!
He scanned the line a final time; the other paladins had done their work. Each of the squires sat ahorse, dressed in uniform save for his surcoat—his own arms emblazed over his heart, and on the back, the white cross of Messai. Save for Trey and Sir Buckley, the other knights had already departed the Valley Rock, and they were soon to follow. For it was the first day of the Hibernis Fair, an affair of freaks, players, and animal tamers come down from the north-eastern mountains to escape their autumn snows. And fill their purses, and ours, thought Gildmane. The great tents were erected outside the city walls where all manner of prowlers could prey upon the helpless gentry—the wealthiest of which would request escorts from the Cross. “And our coffers spill over,” Ba’al’s words blurred with Acker’s, “Let the people see our chivalry first hand.”
“Congratulations on your Confirmation, squires. You’re sworn swords of the Saint’s Cross, and as such, you’ve got duties to attend to. Today is the first day of the annual Hibernis Fair. Several noble families have tithed greatly for our services, and it is your charge to ensure they feel secure enough to enjoy the festivities.”
Royce Armstrong, bright eyed, black haired and square jawed, tore his sword from its scabbard. His lips were all smiles as he pounded the sigil on his breast—two hands cradling a high-peaked mountain. “Fuck yes, Sir! We’ll stick every bloody bastard so that his mother will feel it in her God damned grave!”
Trey rolled his eyes. There was nothing to help the foul mouth of an Armstrong. “Don’t get too excited, squire. I’ve never seen more than drunkards and pickpockets.” He spoke now to everyone. “That goes for the lot of you. This isn’t a battle. I don’t want to hear that a single sword was drawn unless it had to be. ‘Eyes open and appearances up.’ Now off you go. Sir Buckley will show you to your wards. Leonhardt, you’re with me.”
“Damn right, Captain!” answered Knight Armstrong with a face and enthusiasm identical to his younger brother’s. He led the others through the gatehouse, Trey and Jael lagging behind.
They were under Ward Service and out into the streets of inner Pareo before Leonhardt would speak. She was too awed by the city, the way it moved and breathed like a true living thing. Hooves and feet and wagon wheels clattered on the stone roads like a heartbeat, traffic flowed like blood through arteries, and the buildings rose high as castle towers—the bones of the capital, the people their marrow, supporting shops and homes, inns and taverns. Even during the ides of autumn, travel was thick. It would be a long ride before they met Jael’s charges.
“Is it right,” she asked Trey as they stopped for a passing cart, “that the Cross is taking payment from the people like this?”
Gildmane felt for a moment that he was talking with himself ten years younger. “We didn’t always. When I squired for Captain Acker, our protection was given freely whenever the church deemed it worthy. But that wasn’t often. ‘Worldly’ events like the Fair were left unmanaged, and so the public had to rely on their household guard or on mercenaries.”
“What changed?”
“I did,” Trey answered. The cart passed, and they brought their horses to a trot. “Captain Acker showed me how the world ought to be, but shortly after being knighted, I met a certain bishop who taught me how the world truly was. He made me realize that as long as the Cross was dependent on church tithes, we were servants of the clergy, not the people and not God.”
Jae
l pressed a palm over her heart, looked up at Trey, and asked, “Who was the bishop?”
“Ba’al of the Faithful’s Cathedral. It’s just up ahead, in the heart of the Sky District. We’ll be meeting the Roywynns there.” He glanced at Leonhardt and feigned a smile. “I pray that you tolerate the skylords better than I do.”
“Skylords?”
“That’s right, I forgot you grew up a farmer. Lucius, that idiot. He had no right to exile your father; though I suppose you’d not be here had he naught. But that’s a dead horse. Skylords are what we call the landless nobles packed into these apartments. They’re nothing more than merchants and money-lenders now, but they carry their old names and coats of arms as if they’ve something to be proud of. You’ll see what I mean. There they are now, Lord and Lady Roywynn.”
They reined in front of the Faithful’s Cathedral where the whole noble family and their train of coaches awaited them in a glimmering row: three sleek, double-seated carriages with silver-cloth sun covers and a vivid indigo coat—and those were only the coaches. Each driver had been adorned in rich purple vests and cloth-of-silver half-capes, their hoarfrost horses in black leather straps and silver bit and bridle. The lord himself, a portly, balding man with short legs and a thick mustache, stood with a jeweled cane in one hand, his other gripping the dagger at the front of his belt. It was a ballock rondel chased in silver to match the thread of his plush plum doublet. His three sons beside him were dressed all alike, and his gangly lady wife’s gown looked cut from the same cloth. Only his daughter stuck out in her multilayer gown of silver and lace, her chestnut hair bound with a comb encrusted with amethysts. Unlike her skeleton mother, young Lady Roywynn’s cheeks were full and rouge, and her eyes big with innocence. A rabbit, Gildmane thought.
“Can it be? Has the captain himself come to protect us?” bellowed Lord Roywynn.
Trey was happy to disappoint him. “Apologies, my lord. I’m only here to see off my squire. Today you’ll be in the capable hands of Jael Leonhardt.” He leaned in his saddle and beckoned her closer.
Lady Roywynn squinted so that her narrow eyes looked like half-moons glaring either side of her spindly nose. “We paid for the best,” she said, looking neither to the captain nor to her husband. “Am I to understand that this Leonhardt is the best?”
“I swear it,” said Gildmane, “on my honour as a knight. Jael is more than capable of warding off any ne’er-do-wells. And besides, your children seem excited to have her.”
That sparked something in Lord Roywynn. He rustled his mustache, looked to his three eager sons and to his enchanted daughter. “What do you say, Charlotte? Would you feel safe with this woman?”
The maiden looked from Jael to her father with shimmering blue eyes bright as the crisp autumn sky. “Oh,” she whimpered, “I’d be absolutely delighted to have a lady’s company for the eve. Could she…could she please come along with us papa? I’d like her much more than some strange, scary man,” she finished, glancing at the captain. Trey stifled his laughter.
God save you, were Gildmane’s parting words as he rode off on his own for the north-eastern gate of Ward Aureus. And in his mind, they echoed. He wanted to believe that she was all she seemed to be, that the people would love her—flock to her novelty, that Saint Paul had given him a weapon to fight the clergy—a sword. Two swords, he thought, what better way to get the Twin Fangs out of retirement? And who else might follow? Rillion? Commander Rickert? Cleric White? Trey relished in the conniving. He only wished Ba’al was there to praise his cunning. Where are you? he wondered, longing for his mentor. What if it all happens before you get back?
The clatter of hooves on stone gave way to dirt road, and Gildmane woke from his speculating to open country outside Pareo’s gates. To the north, hills and mountains stood like curtains in the distance, and to the east was a green horizon—beyond that, the ocean and pagan lands where demons dwell in the red sands of the Tsaazaar and in the frost fangs to its north and the queer forests to its south. But there, in the heartland of God’s chosen, in sight of the Messaii stronghold, rose the most irreverent structure outside of godless Mephisto. The Hibernis Fairgrounds, eight acres of foot-trodden earth half shadowed beneath a tent of red and green motely canvas. Inside and around were stages, cages, stands, and tables with all manner of exotic fare, animals, and entertainers: play actors, singers, jugglers, and sword swallowers, fire dancers and dancing bears, grotesques and bear wrestlers.
Trey dashed passed them all on his high destrier. His eyes were for the squires and for the citizens they served. Serve. There was a time when such a thought brought a smile to his face, before he was knighted, when he still believed the people were worth protecting. Looking at them now, he couldn’t understand how he ever loved them—how Acker was convinced they could be anything but pawns in the church’s game—these impotent noblemen; these vacuous women, eying him with gold and iron wedding bands on their fingers. He considered for a moment that perhaps the clergy were not wrong to subjugate the masses. Then a man called out from the crowd, his accent thick with the Hibernis north.
“You there, Sir Knight! These children are pleading. They want to see a strong man throw!”
Trey paid the stranger no attention. Then more voices cried out—those of young boys.
“Please Sir! You have to. He said us city folk could never do it!”
“He says people from Pareo are too weak”
“That we don’t got strong backs!”
Street rats, the captain thought, grinning as he swung from atop his saddle and walked his horse to the stranger’s stall. He was mountain man for certain, blonde and balding yet not quite old, dressed from head to toe in snow fox pelts. With all the children about him, he seemed half a giant—until Gildmane drew closer. The stranger stood only as high as the paladin’s breastplate, wincing from the glare of his pale armour.
“That’s the spirit! Let’s give them a show! A strong man with strong arms—arms strong for throwing axes.”
Trey glanced down field where posts had been arranged. Each bore a gourd on top, and they were set at different distances. “What are the rules?”
The stranger grinned and his white face wrinkled. “Simple! We make a wager. Five axes and five gourds.” He showed the captain a bucket of hatchets, then pointed to an enormous chest mounted on the back of a wagon. “If you knock them all down, you pick a prize. But if you don’t…”
“If I don’t?”
His wrinkles ran deeper. “That’s quite a nice horse you have. We don’t have such big animals back home.”
“Easy enough,” Trey pronounced. He could feel the children watching him, hear the stories they would tell if he succeeded—and if he failed. The risk had his heart racing, beating stronger than the pressure of his order’s reputation. Then he laughed—that a children’s game could quicken him more than storming Babylon during the Second Purge—he nearly keeled over from the absurdity. And from the northern stranger’s wary look, Trey figured he must seem just as absurd.
He took a breath to compose himself, then took the bucket from the stranger, flipped a hatchet in his hand. It was light, unbalanced, and blunt as Sir Gardner—likely forged from pig iron, soft, but hard enough to bite a fresh gourd. With a practiced hand, Gildmane hurled the first hatchet, and the closest gourd exploded from its post. Then the second, the third, the fourth. Every bursting of fruit sent the children roaring, and the stranger too. What are you smiling at? thought the captain about the stranger who was about to lose his bet. He smelled a rat, he was certain, and it wasn’t the children. He asked the northerner, “All’s fair so long as I throw an axe from here and hit the mark?”
“Yes, Sir Knight, those are the rules. And remember our wager.”
“I remember,” Trey said, dropping his last hatchet in the bucket and drawing the axe at his hip. The children fell silent. The stranger went pale—began to sputter too late as Gildmane cocked his arm and hurled his double-bitted battle axe at the last standing go
urd. Two turns in the air and the steel gouged the fruit wide open. Bits of seeds and yellow flesh erupted to the heavy clink of metal on metal. The upper half of the gourd was in ruin, yet the bottom refused to abandon its post thanks to a hidden lead weight—now exposed by the bite of Trey’s steel axe.
The stranger looked as though he’d seen a ghost, or as though he might give one up, his wrinkled face as faint and fragile as worn out parchment.
“My prize?” asked the captain.
The northern stuttered, “Mercy, Sir. Take anything you like.”
“Mercy?” Gildmane chuckled. He couldn’t help himself now. “That wasn’t part of our wager, friend. Though perhaps…if I got something extra in return, I might decide not to take your head.”
The rank of piss wafted from the stranger’s trousers. “Anything, Sir!”
Trey beckoned the children closer and watched their lips turn up as he said, “How about each of them gets a pick from the treasure for keeping quiet about our little game?”
“Each?” the man muttered, counting them. There were five.
“And myself, of course. Tell me, friend, what do you think is worth your life?”
The stranger did not answer but went immediately to digging through his chest, his whole arm submerged, groping, till after several seconds, he found it—an ivory case. “This,” he started, “contains a true relic. The Shroud of Solum, of the Iisah prophet killed and reborn from the silt and the earth. I won it in a game from a Mephistine trader. It’s yours.” He opened the case and showed the folded, yellowed linen within.
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